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Joseph A. Altsheler 

and 

American History 



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By Annie Carroll Moore 



^tU 17 1919 



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'^ y^'V \ 5^ Joseph A, Altsheler 

/f^ i^——^— —■■■■■■ nil 111^— —^^^^—^—i^— and 

American 

. IjIe looks young in that picture but he could 
have lived all through American history — he makes 
it so true. You couldn't do better than to read his 
books. You can even answer some of the Regent's 
questions out of Altsheler 's books. I read every 
one of them and I got an a-1 mark for history." 
The speaker, a boy of seventeen, stood with a group 
of younger boys before a table in the central chil- 
dren's room of The New York Public Library — 
the library built by the City — which stands at the 
corner of Fifth Avenue and Forty-second Street. 

It was the morning of June 7th, 1919. Many 
boys brought clippings from the newspapers; 
others had been told the sad news by their friends. 
"Altsheler is dead" they said. "Let's go round to 
the Library." All day long they came, and know- 
ing that it would be so, we had asked Mr. Altsheler's 
publishers to send to the children's room a complete 
set of his books for boys and a photograph of the 
author to hang above his books. The Trailers 
series, The Texan series, the French and Indian 
War series, the Civil War series, the Great West 
series — all were there to bear silent testimony to a 
man whose work had been his life. As I read my 
own morning paper, memory gave back two vivid 
pictures of Mr. Altsheler — the first, as he stood one 
evening, the night before Lincoln's birthday, 1914, 
in front of a blazing wood fire in the children's room 
of the 115th Street Branch of The New York Pub- 
lic Library — the second, as he sat alone in his office 
in the tower of the World Building on an after- 
noon in October, 1918. 

Copyright, 1919, by Annie Carroll Moore 

Page Three 



Joseph A . A Itsheler 

and 

American On the first occasion he had come to tell the 

History boys of one of the Library Reading Clubs about 
his Texan series. "I have made only three or four 
speeches in my life," he said in a letter to the club 
advisor, "but I don't feel I can disappoint a group 
of boys." With great simplicity he spoke that night 
of his own boyhood and its dreams ; telling how he 
would lie on his back by the hour out there in the 
woods of Daniel Boone's country, letting his mind 
dwell on the pioneer tales of America until they 
came to have for him the fascination that tales of 
Greece have had for other minds. 

"The Young Trailers" represented, he said, 
the realization of some of these dreams, kept alive 
by his constant reading and study of the best sources 
of American history. The boys of the club were 
impressed by Mr. Altsheler's sincerity and his 
modesty. "He doesn't praise himself or the char- 
acters in his books," said one of them. 



J— iAST October I went by appointment to talk 
with Mr. Altsheler in his office in the tower of the 
World Building. The hour of the appointment 
had been thus set in a note written and addressed 
by his own hand : "any time between 2.30 and 4.30." 
Mr. Altsheler also gave exact directions for reach- 
ing his office by a special elevator leading to the 
tower. I have spent so many hours waiting in 
offices that I carried a book with me, as usual. But 
Mr. Altsheler, although a busy editor of a news- 
paper, did not keep me waiting. He received me 
with the same courteous consideration he had shown 
to the boys of the reading club. 

Page Four 



Joseph A. Altsheler 
and 
I had several questions to ask and he answered American 
every one of them graciously and illuminatingly. History 
Parkman was the author who had meant most to 
him, he said. When I asked what books he had 
read as a boy, he replied that books had not been 
plentiful in the part of Kentucky where he had 
spent his boyhood and they were eagerly passed 
about from one family to another. The best of the 
English classics — Scott, Dickens, Thackeray, 
mingled with tales of the pioneers and Indians. 
Many of the latter he heard at first hand, for he 
was descended on his mother's side from the Ken- 
tucky and Virginia borderers, and in his boyhood 
continually heard the legends of Boone, Kenton, 
Harned, Logan and the other great woodsmen and 
fighters. As a boy, also, he knew many of the 
veterans of the Civil War, including both Union 
and Confederate generals. 



R 



yEADiNG had been very early an absolute 
necessity with him and in all his work his instinct 
was to get back to first sources to verify the inform- 
ation and the stories which had been passed on to 
him by word of mouth. He began to write for a 
newspaper as soon as he left college and served first 
in an editorial capacity on the Louisville Courier- 
Journal; later, and until his death, on the New 
York World, as editor of the Tri- Weekly World. 
He had written several books before he began to 
write for boys. His own son was eleven or twelve 
years old when he wrote the first and perhaps the 
best of his books for boys — *'The Young Trailers" 
was published in 1906. Mr. Altsheler told me that 
he allowed no thought of the age of his readers to 

Page Five 



Joseph A. Altsheler 

and 

American affect his treatment of a subject and he never for- 

History got that he was telling his stories against a back- 
ground of reality. This accounts, I think, for the 
number of fathers and older brothers who en joy- 
reading Altsheler. 

It was no surprise to Mr. Altsheler to be told 
that his books about the War in Europe were less 
popular than the other series. Although he had 
been "over there," he felt that it was too soon to 
write stories of the War. 



A 



T four o'clock I rose to leave Mr. Alsheler's 
office. We had talked for an hour about American 
History and its meaning, of the value of American 
tradition gathered at first hand from living people, 
as well as from books, and of story writing. "I 
want to thank you for the boys as well as for my- 
self," I said. "The boys who wait in line for 'an Alt- 
sheler.' While you and I have been talking on 
top of the World Building, long lines of big boys 
have been forming in libraries all over Manhattan 
and the Bronx. Just as the younger children line 
up for fairy tales to be returned to the always 
empty shelves, so do older boys line up for your 
books to be returned by other boys who have been 
reading them. For no other author do big boys wait 
in long lines in our libraries, refusing to be put off 
with other titles when bent upon securing 'an Alt- 
sheler.' " This was news to Mr. Altsheler and he 
seemed deeply impressed by the picture presented 
TO his imagination of the waiting lines of boys in 
New York libraries. "I would like to see them 
with my own eyes," he said. "And so you shall, 
but meanwhile what shall we say to the boys?" I 
asked. "If they like my books tell them to read 

Page Six 



Joseph A. Altsheler 

and 

the history behind them, above all, to read Park- American 

man; he has been my great inspiration." History 

Mr. Altsheler then walked with me to the 
elevator of the tower, still maintaining that air of 
leisure and regard for the other person's time and 
convenience so characteristic of him in business and 
personal relations alike. He was an indefatigable 
worker and always had one or more manuscripts 
ready for publication; but he was trained for his 
task, he wasted no time in impatience, he raised no 
barriers to free intercourse and he knew his sub- 
ject. I never saw Mr. Altsheler again. Some 
weeks later I received a letter from him thanking 
me for an appreciation of his work which I had 
written before the interview just described took 
place. This tribute I am now glad to feel was paid 
in his lifetime. 



W„ 



HEN Mrs. Altsheler returned from her sad 
journey to Kentucky last June, I called upon her 
in order to verify some points touched upon in this 
sketch and to assure her of the deep sympathy 
many New York boys were feeling for her and her 
son. As we talked, I knew that I had really met 
Joseph Altsheler, that I had been in touch with 
his Kentucky boyhood as well as with his New 
York manhood. The strong impressions he re- 
ceived as a boy remained fresh with him always. 
"There is one review of my husband's work that 
expresses more nearly my own thought of him, in 
connection with it, than any other. I do not know 
who wrote it, but you shall read it for yourself," 
said Mrs. Altsheler. The review had been clipped 
from an article and no name was attached to it, 

Page Seven 



LIBRARY OF CONGRESS 




Joseph A. Altsheler „,ii um i,,,, ,„„ i,,,, ,,, , „„ ,„ „ , , 

and 2 15 799 425 6 ^ 

Atnerican but I recognized it at once as a part of the article 

History I have just mentioned as my own, and since it 

seemed a true appraisal to Mrs. Altsheler, who so 

well understood her husband's work, it shall have 

place here in conclusion. 

*"It is very significant that the most popular 
author of boy's books in our public libraries today 
— Joseph Altsheler — should be writing over again, 
with a fresh sense of their reality, the tales of our 
pioneer life and struggle. 

*'VVhy don't the boys read Cooper? Some of 
them do usually after they have read 'The Young 
Trailers' and 'The Forest Runners' by Altsheler. 
But Altsheler is doing what neither Cooper nor any 
other author has been able to do — he is taking the 
average American boy into the wilderness that he 
may realize his heritage in the history of his country 
and take his place there more intelligently. Boys 
who clamor for Altsheler read history and bio- 
graphy as a natural and necessary accompaniment. 
Nor do they neglect 'Tom Sawyer' and 'Huckle- 
berry Finn', or 'The Boys' Life of Mark Twain.' 

"ISTever in the history of writing for boys has 
an author attained universal popularity on so broad 
a foundation of allied interests in reading. I be- 
lieve the secret of Mr. Altsheler's appeal lies in a 
deep love of nature; the ability to select from his- 
torical sources subjects of strong human interest, 
a natural gift for story-telling, and great modesty." 



From The Bookman, November, 1918. 



HoUinger Corp. 
pH 8.5 



